The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

A review on the back of the book best summarized the feeling after I ended the last page – “Quietly Devastating”. I think I nodded to myself. I must have been in a daze.

Before I read The Remains of the Day I feared death more than anything else. Life was so much fun. Does it have to end? This book (along with Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal) changed my thinking. I dived into interviews of people in their final days trying to confirm insights from the book. In most cases the dying were unhappy, not from knowing they were on their way out, but from decisions they had not made or acted upon. From regret. In the case of the aging English butler in the book, restraint, propriety, and a sense of duty to his profession leads him down the path of faithfully serving a Nazi sympathizer and not pursuing love. The final pages of the book, as he looks back on his life, is heart breaking.

English comedic writer and actor Stephen Fry jokes that during his first few visits to the States he was amazed at the sheer size of the “Self Help” sections in bookstores. He is not alone. But I detect a hint of admiration in the voices of people who mention this American obsession with self-improvement, because we have a lot to show for it.

So now I worry about not trying something new more than trying it. I hope to reach my deathbed with a long list of successes and failures and a short list of “did not try”s.